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December 25, 2009

Jimmy Carter's Fake Apology

Sammy Benoit
Once the Camp David accords fell into Jimmy Carter's lap (Begin and Sadat brought Carter into the negotiations), the Peanut President turned against the Jews and the Jewish State.

"During the difficult negotiations between Egypt and Israel, Carter and his advisers tried to get Sadat to engage in a collusive scheme: They would encourage Sadat to make "deliberately exaggerated" demands. The White House would then intervene to "compel" Cairo to scale back its demands in exchange for Israeli concessions. Then-national security advisor Brzezinski explained that Washington would "apply maximum leverage on Israel to accommodate, by keeping the West Bank's political future on the table for future negotiations. That Carter risked possible Israeli-Egyptian peace in an effort to extract greater concessions from Begin underscores the tension in their relationship." Source

Carter has spent his post-Camp David life demonizing Israel and bashing the Jewish people and excusing Palestinian terrorism, the worst of which was seen in his 21st book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. In this book Carter allows his anti-Israel ideology get in the way of facts.  It contains serious errors of both commission and omission. To suit his goals, he manipulates information, redefines facts, and exaggerates conclusions. He describes Israelis as racists and war-mongering aggressors; Hamas as moderates forced to commits acts of terror, and American Jews as manipulators of American Foreign Policy.

Here's just one example his Jewish stereotyping from that book:

"There are constant and vehement political and media debates in Israel concerning its policies in the West Bank but because of powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the U.S., Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate our media, and most American citizens are unaware of circumstances in the occupied territories." 

In English, Carter is using that ugly old anti-Semitic stereotype that the Jews control  the media, Congress, and the U.S. Foreign policy. 

Now Carter wants to put that all behind him.  He wants to apologize to the Jews for slandering Israel for the better part of thirty years.

Jimmy Carter asked the Jewish community for forgiveness for any stigma he may have caused Israel. In a letter released exclusively to JTA, the former US president sent a seasonal message wishing for peace between Israel and its neighbors, and concluded:


We must recognize Israel's achievements under difficult circumstances, even as we strive in a positive way to help Israel continue to improve its relations with its Arab populations, but we must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel. As I would have noted at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but which is appropriate at any time of the year, I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so."

"Al Het" refers to the Yom Kippur prayer asking God forgiveness for sins committed against Him.  In Modern Hebrew it refers to any plea for forgiveness.

Carter has angered some US Jews in recent years with writings and statements that place the burden of peacemaking on Israel, that have likened Israel's settlement policies to apartheid, and that have blamed the pro-Israel lobby for inhibiting an evenhanded US foreign policy

Abe Foxman, Democratic Party activist and head of the ADL rushed to absolve Carter:


Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League's national director, welcomed the statement, calling it the "beginning of reconciliation."

"We welcome any statement from a significant individual such as a former president who asks for Al Het," Foxman said. "To what extent it is an epiphany, time will tell. There certainly is hurt which needs to be repaired."

Sorry Jimmy, Sorry Abe, I do not yet forgive Jimmy Carter. I know the Rabbis teach us that we do not curse bad people, we are supposed to pray that they see the error of their ways and do "teshuvah" which means to apologize and change the way they lead their lives. But Carter has a very long way to go in the "teshuvah" scale.

Jimmy Carter not offered a true apology. He says he is sorry that his statements have ostracized Israel; Carter is only concerned with the effect of his statements.   He ignores the content of his statements, the exaggerating the truth supporting terrorism and use of Anti-Semitic stereotypes. Let's face it; we are talking about a man that hates the Jewish people so much that he rejected someone for employment at the US Holocaust Museum because his name sounded too Jewish.

"Former President Jimmy Carter once complained there were "too many Jews" on the government's Holocaust Memorial Council, Monroe Freedman, the council's former executive director, told WND in an exclusive interview.

Freedman, who served on the council during Carter's term as president, also revealed a noted Holocaust scholar who was a Presbyterian Christian was rejected from the council's board by Carter's office because the scholar's name "sounded too Jewish."

Freedman says he was tasked with creating a board for the council and with making recommendations to the White House on how best to memorialize the Holocaust.

He told WND he sent a memo to Carter's office containing recommendations for council board members.

He said his memo was returned with a note on the upper right hand corner that stated, "Too many Jews."  The note, Freedman said, was written in Carter's handwriting and was initialed by Carter."

There is an old Hasidic tale which illustrates the effect of what Jimmy Carter has spent a generation doing, on the Jewish people.

A man went about the community telling malicious lies about the rabbi. Later, he realized the wrong he had done, and began to feel remorse. He went to the rabbi and begged his forgiveness, saying he would do anything he could to make amends. The rabbi told the man, "Take a feather pillow, cut it open, and scatter the feathers to the winds." The man thought this was a strange request, but it was a simple enough task, and he did it gladly. When he returned to tell the rabbi that he had scattered the feathers, the rabbi said, "Now, go and gather the feathers. Because you can no more make amends for the damage your words have done than you can recollect the feathers."

Mister Carter, first do TRUE teshuva apologize for all of your acts against the Jewish people, than go collect all of the "feathers," after that, well maybe, we can talk.

Sammy Benoit is Editor of the Political Blog The Lid

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